See police recover £65,000 watch from robbery gang

This is the moment police recovered a £65,000 watch less than an hour after its owner had been violently robbed in Birmingham city centre.

The victim had left a nightclub just before 4am when a man approached him and asked how he was.

The victim ignored him but the man kept demanding to talk to him. 

As the victim tried to move away, he was grabbed and pushed against a shop shutter and heard the man shout to accomplices waiting nearby that he had an expensive watch.

The gang surrounded him and he was repeatedly punched in the head by the gang, who held his arms down and took the watch off him.

The gang drove away in a black Mercedes people carrier, but patrolling officers spotted it on Broad Street at the junction with Sheepcote Street. They stopped it on Ladywood Middleyway.

As the men were being detained, one officer noticed two of the passengers putting their hands down the seat of the car as they tried to hide something.

The watch, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, was quickly recovered and returned to the victim – who had inherited it following the death of a relative.

Three men went on to admit the robbery, which happened on 21 April, and were jailed at Birmingham Crown Court on 22 November.

Jovan Mulcare, 28 of Bentham Court, London, was given four years and six months.

Andre Hewitt, 28, of Bay House, Grays, Essex, was given three years and nine months.

Alimi Aviz, 23, of Regents Court, Hackney, London, was jailed for three years.

DC Stephen Foy, from Force CID, said: “This was great work by officers who were able to quickly identify the robbers.

"Just over 30 minutes after the original 999 call, we had the offenders in custody and the watch recovered.”